Jehovah's Witnesses ordered to pay more than $20 million to woman who said she was sexually abused

By James Eng, msnbc.com

In what both sides described as a momentous ruling, a jury in Oakland, Calif., has found that Jehovah’s Witnesses was

partly responsible for the alleged sexual abuse of a girl by one of its members and must pay her more than $20 million.

The Alameda County Superior Court jury on Thursday awarded $21 million in punitive damages to the plaintiff, who is now 26 years old. That was on top of the $7 million in compensatory damages it awarded her on Wednesday.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ legal entity, is responsible for the entire punitive damages amount and 40 percent of the compensatory damages, said Rick Simons, attorney for the plaintiff. Sixty percent of the compensatory damages was assessed against Jonathan Kendrick, the man accused of abusing her.

The woman sued Watchtower, the Fremont, Calif., congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Kendrick in 2011. She contended church elders acting under the authority of Watchtower knew about the risk of child sex abuse in their midst but kept it secret.

“I once wanted to be the best Jehovah’s Witness I could be. Now I feel I’m doing more to help other children in Jehovah’s Witnesses than I ever did walking door to door to spread the ‘good news,’” the woman said in a news release issued by Simons.

Jim McCabe, attorney for the Fremont congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, said Thursday before the punitive damages were announced that he was “stunned” by the verdict and would appeal.

“This is the first case I know of where a church has been hit with liability involving a rank-and-file member,” he told msnbc.com.

The jury found that the elders who managed the Fremont congregation in the 1990s and who were under the supervision of Watchtower knew that Kendrick, a member and a congregation leader, had recently been convicted of the sexual abuse of another child, but they kept his past record secret from the congregation, said Simons.

Kendrick went on to molest the plaintiff, who was a Jehovah's Witness member in Fremont, over a two-year period beginning when she was 9 years old, the lawsuit contended.

Kendrick was eventually convicted in 2004 of the sexual abuse of another girl, and is now a registered sex offender in California, Simons said. He has not been criminally charged with abusing the plaintiff, but Simons said the case is under investigation by law enforcement.

Kendrick was not in court for the trial and msnbc.com could not immediately find a contact number for him.

The California sex offender registry lists two convictions for him: lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age and sexual battery involving a restrained person.

The lawsuit alleged that Watchtower had a policy that instructed elders in its Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations to keep reports of child sex abusers within the religious group secret to avoid lawsuits.

“The verdict is significant because the policy of hiding sex abusers within the congregation was out in this case,” Simons said.

He also said the judgment was “one of the largest in the country for a child sex abuse single victim in a religious institution molestation case.”

Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination noted for its nontraditional interpretation of the Bible. Members are best known for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake! magazines.

The woman filed the lawsuit after trying, without success, to get Jehovah’s Witnesses in Southern California and in Fremont to change the secrecy policy, Simons said.

“There was no settlement demand from her because she felt the only way to expose this policy and make it change was to bring this case to trial and make it public,” he said.

“The money is the only way left for her to force Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop keep hiding known sex offenders within their congregation.”